Being pregnant isn't always an easy journey. In fact, it's more like an adventure.

Monday, August 22, 2011

You Seriously Have to Drink This?

Those were my exact words to the poor little male tech sitting behind the lab counter. I don't think he was quite ready for that remark at 8am, but honestly I wasn't ready to down that glass of nasty looking orange stuff. It looked like a poison concoction created on a mad scientist show with its unnatural orange color, sickly sweet scent and granules of sugar just floating around. Honestly, they could have put it in a colored cup instead of a clear one, but I guess they wanted to make sure you knew how disgusting the drink looked before consuming it. Thanks for the concern (can you hear the sarcasm?).

The tech quickly told me to just gulp the drink down as fast as I could and do so within five minutes. As my face began to turn green from the churning of my stomach at the mere thought of ingesting that goo, he smartly added in, "If you throw it up, you'll have to come back and take the test all over again another day." Although I didn't want to hear that, I'm glad that he told me because I'm pretty sure I would have tossed my cookies otherwise.

I gave him my best version of a half-way smile, grudgingly grabbed the cup and made my way over to some seats across from the counter. I sat down, took a deep breath and chugged that thing faster than I have ever chugged anything before. If I had been in a beer shotgun contest, I would have smoked my competition (For the record, I have never shotgunned a beer although that is on my bucket list). The sugar evaded my taste buds and I began dry heaving right there in the waiting room. The person sitting a seat away from me backed up to the farthest regions of their chair and several people gave me that "Oh my God - don't let her puke" look. I took several deep breathes and as the people around me relaxed their worried expressions, I knew that my puking reflex had begun to subside. I leaned back in the chair, closed my eyes and chanted, "Don't let me puke, don't let me puke" over and over again for the next hour until they called my number to go get my blood drawn.

As soon as my number was called, I hurried back to the lab. Thankfully, I got an experienced blood sucker as he took one look at my veins and immediately got the little butterfly needle thing (I usually have to endure several pokes before they resort to using this). I'm not sure if my veins gave this away or my queasy looking face and labored breathing did, but either way, he took my blood and sent me on my merry way. I made it to the parking lot before I threw up the nastiness, but I held out till after the test. I think I deserve a cookie for that one.